Haji Abdul Gani Khan & Anr. vs. Union of India & Ors.
Background
Following the 2019 reorganisation of the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir into the Union Territories of J&K and Ladakh, the Central Government constituted a Delimitation Commission in March 2020 to redraw assembly and parliamentary constituency boundaries in J&K (and, initially, four North-Eastern states, later dropped). The petitioners, invoking Article 32, challenged the entire delimitation exercise, arguing it violated constitutional provisions capping constituency readjustment until after the first census following 2026 (Article 170 and similar provisions), that a "Renaming"-style Delimitation Commission could not lawfully override the Election Commission's role, and that excluding the North-Eastern states from the same notification was discriminatory. Notably, the petitioners expressly did not challenge the abrogation of Article 370 itself, nor did they formally challenge the constitutional validity of the J&K Reorganisation Act, 2019.
Decision Breakdown
The Supreme Court held that Article 170 (and similar provisions like Articles 81, 82, 330, 332) govern only State Legislatures under Part VI of the Constitution and have no application to Union Territories, whose legislatures are instead governed by Article 239A and laws made by Parliament under Articles 3 and 4, so the constitutional embargo the petitioners relied on simply did not apply to J&K as a Union Territory. It held that the J&K Reorganisation Act validly amended the Delimitation Act, 2002 to apply 2011 census figures (instead of 2001) specifically to J&K, validly increased assembly seats from 107 to 114, and validly entrusted the readjustment exercise to a Delimitation Commission rather than the Election Commission: none of which was illegal or discriminatory, since the position of J&K as a newly created Union Territory was materially different from the North-Eastern states. The Court also noted the petition was significantly delayed (filed nearly two years after the original notification, after the delimitation exercise was substantially complete) and that a specific challenge to the constitutional validity of the Reorganisation Act's provisions cannot be read into a petition where it was never actually pleaded. Importantly, the Court expressly clarified it was not ruling on the separate pending question of the validity of the 2019 abrogation of Article 370 itself. The writ petition was dismissed with no order as to costs.
Lesson Learnt
Constitutional provisions written for "States" (like Article 170's restrictions on redrawing constituencies) do not automatically extend to Union Territories, which are governed by a separate constitutional scheme (Article 239A), and a court will not infer an unpleaded constitutional challenge to a law merely because a petitioner's oral arguments gesture toward it.